


Memento Vivere

by within_a_dream



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Ghosts, M/M, Minor suicidal ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-09
Updated: 2014-10-09
Packaged: 2018-02-20 12:44:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2429300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/within_a_dream/pseuds/within_a_dream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are different types of hauntings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memento Vivere

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lexigent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lexigent/gifts).



> I was so excited when I received your prompts, and I hope I did them justice!

Elsinore was full of ghosts. Sometimes, it seemed they outnumbered the living. Sometimes, Horatio wondered if he was one of them. He was carrying on important work here, he told himself, compiling Hamlet’s story, but the truth was, he couldn’t bring himself to leave.

Even if he finished his account, no one would believe him. The story had been implausible from the beginning, when the old king’s soul had first walked the walls, and it had only grown more so by the end. If Horatio hadn’t witnessed it himself, he wouldn’t have believed it either. But he was bound by oath, and if he wasn’t occupied with his task, he wasn’t sure he’d have anything to live for. If he let go of the past, he’d be letting go of everything his life had been, letting go of the man he’d loved. It was better to remain focused on collecting this story, no matter how trapped it made him feel sometimes.

He found himself drawn, again and again, to the throne room. He couldn’t help but hope that he would walk in and find that the massacre he remembered so vividly had only been a dream, but stepping through the doorway tore that illusion away. The blood and bile had long since been scrubbed from the stones, the bodies dragged away, but sorrow still hung in the air. No one mentioned it, but the other residents made a point of avoiding the room. Horatio was certain he couldn’t be the only one who heard the queen’s screams echoing through the halls at night. Surely Horatio couldn’t be the only one who’d seen, out of the corner of his eye, the king stumble to the ground, reliving his death in an endless torturous loop.

Given the choice, however, Horatio almost preferred those more clichéd ghosts. At least with them, he knew where he stood. The others were not so easy to understand. Laertes didn’t howl, or cry, or stalk the halls, he simply…lingered. Every so often, Horatio would see a face, long and white, flicker into view beside the throne. It was never a body, just a face, eyes deep with sorrow. One night, Laertes tried to say something, but nothing had come out but a faint rasp.

“I don’t understand,” Horatio had said, helplessly, and with a final sigh, Laertes once again faded away. He was back the next night, but he’d apparently given up his attempts to communicate, refusing to acknowledge Horatio’s questions.

Horatio had run over the conversation in his mind many, many times since that night, certain that if he thought about it long enough, he’d be able to decipher Laertes’ plea. Whatever the man had done, he certainly didn’t deserve this fate—trapped between worlds, calling out a desperate plea for help that no one could understand.

Whether it was better or worse than the fate that had befallen his sister, Horatio couldn’t say. Ophelia didn’t even seem to realize she was dead. He’d heard her before he saw her, the first night he thought to look. He’d thought for weeks that maybe one of them had made it beyond Elsinore, that she had escaped whatever bound the rest of the dead here. Then he’d thought to look for her by the river, and his heart had sunk when he heard the first strains of her song drifting through the air. Then he saw her, shimmering in and out of view as she strolled along the river’s edge. He’d tried to talk to her, but she only smiled and kept singing.

            _Oh, take me in your arms, love_

_For keen the wind doth blow_

_Oh, take me in your arms, love_

_For bitter is my woe_

He shouted her name, and she turned and seemed to see him for a moment before she faded away. But when he returned the next night, she looked straight through him. At least she didn’t seem to be in pain, Horatio told himself. No matter how hard he tried to reassure himself of this, he couldn’t shake the notion that spending eternity lost in your mind was far worse than the alternative.

There was no helping the dead. Horatio told himself that on the nights when he couldn’t shut his eyes without seeing a spectral face grimacing in agony, a skeletal hand reaching for him, beseeching him to help them. Their bones lay buried beneath the ground, and there was nothing he nor any living man could do to help them.

There was nothing that could be done to help him, Horatio thought sometimes, when the nights dragged on too long and he was left in the dark with nothing but his doubts to keep him company. And what did that say about him, that he was as trapped within these walls as the souls bound here? After he’d fulfilled his promise, he would have nothing left to live for. But how could he return to Wittenberg when everything had changed? It were better he had died as well that night, rather than live on half-dead with grief.

It was these nights that he felt Hamlet’s presence most strongly. He’d near died of fright the first night, feeling a kiss like frostbite pressed to his lips. Then he’d heard the laugh, and he’d known.

_Where have you been?_ Horatio longed to ask. _Why did you leave me alone?_ Instead, afraid any words would banish him to wherever he’d come from, Horatio leaned into the kiss. If he shut his eyes, he could almost imagine that Hamlet was with him in the flesh, that nothing had changed.

_Don’t leave,_ he heard Hamlet whisper, sometime in the night. _Not yet._

“I won’t, I swear it.”

Horatio woke up the next morning with blue lips, cold skin, an empty bed, and the thought that perhaps he could keep going after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Ophelia sings "The Willow Tree": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SO_3ov2PPA


End file.
